Reviews in a nutshell
Initial thoughts of Tracks (2013), or 127 Hours spring to mind, Danny Boyle’s film that closed the 2010 BFI London Film Festival. There is an element of solitary confinement, battling the elements to survive, but that is where the comparisons end with Wild. This is a surprisingly engaging and spiritually enlightening story about one woman …
Vera Brittain’s WWI memoir of the same name is ideal subject matter to adapt for the big screen. Wartime and one woman’s inner strength (as well as beauty) is a heady mixture. Screenwriter Juliette Towhidi is sensitive to the original material, wanting Brittain to be a champion for women while very much innocent and blindly …
Never mind mansion tax, what if you had a lodger who could live in your inheritance until their death by law – and you had to pay them rent? This quaint piece of French jurisdiction known as a ‘viager’ is the premise for respected playwright Israel Horowitz’s screen adaptation of his successful play, My Old …
The life of the brilliant-minded Alan Turing is not known by most. That will certainly change after this film, The Imitation Game, with the genius British logician and cryptologist forever associated with cracking the Nazis’ Enigma Code and helping the Allies win World War II. But inventor of the modern-day computer – as is suggested here, …
War makes for a powerful cinematic theme. It’s the backdrop for many a personal struggle. End of Watch (2012) writer-director David Ayer’s Fury is no exception. While about the physical horrors of combat, it’s also a sobering coming-of-age drama, told through the eyes of a new tank recruit. It also addresses the psychological effect on …
This is Northern Ireland Troubles behind ‘enemy lines’ (from a British military perspective), a powerful cat-and-mouse game that makes ’71 an exhilarating watch from the start. There needed to be a fresh angle, which writer Gregory Burke evokes, making sure that there is enough Belfast streets-located violence to establish and drum home the effects of …
